As I understand it, this is quite commonplace in Japan. According to a Japanese colleague, phones produced by Japanese manufacturers for local sale are legally obliged to support this feature.
I live in Japan and I've never heard of such a regulation, and my cell phones don't have such a feature.
Actually, it's not exactly a hardware feature, it's just an app. After the Tohoku Earthquake in March, many people started using early-warning apps. So yes, it's commonplace.
No such a legal obligation, but all three major careers support the warning system (however Softbank has only few phones that can receive the warning messages).
This system uses a feature defined in 3GPP and probably can be implemented in cellular networks in other countries than Japan. However it may need modifications of the software in the network, it may take several years to be fully deployed.
Short of any evidence whatsoever that Apple was selling phones in contravention of Japanese law, or even that such a law exists, such a headline would seem absurd.
With the availability of commercial offerings, I'd be surprised if Apple integrated NWS warnings. They'd be negating sales of apps, which reduces not just a vendor's revenue, but their own as well..
Apple doesn't care one whiff about any single app's livelihood. If integrating something improves the user experience, then it gets integrated.
iOS 5 is already taking aim at Instapaper (Reading List), the entire ToDo category (Reminders), non-SMS messaging apps (iMessage), Zinio (Newsstand), half the camera apps out there, and a swath of Twitter apps [1]. You can almost bet if there is a swell of applications with similar features that Apple will wipe them all out in the next major version of iOS.
What's one more weather app? Apple is already taking aim at them by adding hourly forecasts to the built in weather app for iOS 5.
That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Apple (famously or infamously) has no problem adding features that formerly only third party apps had.
Apple sells devices first and is middleman for developers second. Apple makes their money with devices.
If Apple doesn’t integrate a feature they would like to, the reason is much more likely that they don’t want to scare off developers, not (the small) lost revenue and (the even smaller) lost profit. (Considering the massive amounts of people writing software for iOS, that’s something Apple currently doesn’t have to worry about all that much.)
Apple will always want to make their devices more attractive for consumers. I don’t think that developers have priority for them (at least compared to consumers).
I'm in Japan right now, and I've found the early warning service random at best. I'd say 50% of the time I get alerts, I actually feel the quake, and 50% of the quakes I get have no alert.
There are quakes [that you can feel] about every other day (here in Tokyo, they're still more frequent up in Sendai).
I just finished reading '2030' by Albert Brooks and this functionality reminds me a lot of how communication devices are described in that book. In the book everybody has video-watches and they allow the government to instantly and simultaneously broadcast to the entire world.
